Breastfeeding in public. Build a bridge.

I’ve been a subscriber to google alerts for a couple of months now. The topics I am sent include “breastfeeding”, “bottle feeding”, “pregnancy” and “lactation consultants”. I get links to newspaper and magazine articles that the great google machine finds via its keyword searches.

Most days I skim them, some days I read a few and my midwife Facebook friends will know that I often post links that I think are discussion-worthy or particularly interesting.

The breastfeeding posts and links and articles have predominantly been focussed on two things: reported incidents of women breastfeeding who have been asked to cover up or leave the space they’re in. The other topic is how women are unfairly pressured to breastfeed by so-called breastfeeding nazis – a topic I have addressed in another post (More women doing it for longer).

I am coming to think that breastfeeding in public is a key issue for ongoing breastfeeding rates in Western countries. And it’s an issue of human rights…no,dammit, women’s rights.

If a woman is going to have the freedom to leave her home and surrounds with her breastfeeding infant she needs to know that she can feed her baby whenever and wherever she wants to, and more importantly, whenever, wherever and for however long it takes for her baby to feed. With no judgement whatsoever, and even with some encouragement – not a cheer squad, but maybe a nice place to sit and a drink of water.

Women who breastfeed in public are expected to look after the feelings of everyone else who enters that public space. It’s less of an issue that anyone can actually see anything (for example, areola or nipple) and more about the idea that this woman could be breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding women are often being asked to be discreet by the members of the public who see themselves as Reasonable People: “I don’t mind if women breastfeed, but they should be discreet about it”. These people seem uninformed as to the realities of feeding a live, wriggling child. And also to how rare sexual exhibitionism is amongst breastfeeding women.

Being a mother of a small baby and toddler can be an isolating experience. A lot of a mother’s time is spent in her own home with her children, attending to her childrens’ needs and running the household. Being able to get out, even if it’s to the shops, is what you need to do every day and sometimes it’s a downright lifeline (please take note shop keepers).

We all expect that when we enter the public sphere we can act as we please, within certain boundaries.

For a breastfeeding mother that means that she will very likely need to breastfeed her child at some point in public.She needs to do that so that she can leave her house, buy food, feel part of a community, stimulate her child, maybe even have a latte…in short, live her life.

Frankly, anyone else’s sensibilities will need to take a back seat if we can agree that, as a member of our society, she has the right to do those things. And breastfeed.

In Australia she has the inalienable legal right to do so.

I know that women’s bodies being displayed in public is a complicated issue in Western society. And breastfeeding is seen as a private activity that shouldn’t (?) be brought into the public sphere. What better way to cut through the hypocrisy around the objectification of women’s bodies than for a mother to carry out a beautiful, physiological activity of love and food with her child?